The Cowboy Takes a Bride (8 page)

Sounds of arriving guests filled her ears. Murmured conversation. The hollow squeak of new shoes against hardwood. The repeated creak of the front door hinges. Mariah could feel the chapel filling up. The room grew warmer. Goose bumps rose on her forearms. Her stomach clenched. Excitement spilled into her mouth. It tasted like Jordan almonds and butter mints.

She stood at the front of the room, off to the side, making sure everything was perfect. The bride was getting ready. The groom had arrived. No mistakes. Nothing wrong. In her dreams, she was in charge and all was right in the world.

And then she realized all the people in the room were dressed in cowboy clothes.

How strange was that?

M
ariah awoke with a jolt sometime later. Sun spilled in through the west window. Resentment at being pulled from the bucolic dream nibbled at her. It was late afternoon. She’d been asleep for several hours. Hunger drove her from the bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and a vague headache dogged her.

She threw back the covers and, yawning, stumbled to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her hair. She’d forgotten to take her contacts out before she’d taken a nap and now her eyes felt raw and achy. She plucked out the contacts and rummaged in her purse for her glasses.

Feeling fuzzy, she padded to the refrigerator and checked it again. Same unappetizing fare as before. She longed for a salad.

“To heck with it,” she mumbled, grabbed her purse, and headed for the car. Already she felt claustrophobic in the confines of the small house crammed with the bits and pieces of her father’s life.

At the end of the road, she turned left and headed for Jubilee. The drive was solitary. Trees and hills. Cattle and horses. Big rounds of hay rolled up in the fields. She passed several pickup trucks, some SUVs, and a car or two. The drivers invariably waved. To be polite, Mariah waved back. She missed the city already where no one waved unless they knew you and oftentimes not even then.

It seemed she drove for hours, but it was really about fifteen minutes. She rounded a bend in the road and passed a billboard sign with a cowboy in full riding regalia on the back of a quarter horse.

The sign said: “Welcome to Jubilee, Cutting Horse Capital of the World.”

She hadn’t noticed the sign when she’d arrived in the dark, tired and looking for a soft place to land. Nor had she really been able to see the details of the slumbering town. This time around, she took it all in, realizing she just might be stuck here for a while.

The main drag carried her past a feed store, an equine vet, and a mercantile that sold black pot-bellied woodstoves, stock tanks, and metal windmills. Deer feeders were set up in the parking lot of an independently owned hardware store, along with dog kennels and chain-link fencing. In the window of an old, rambling, limestone building, a sign out front declared: “Best Handmade Furniture in Texas.” There was a boot and Western wear shop dubbed Western Wear Palooza, a tractor supply, and a place that sold horse trailers. She motored by the First Horseman’s Bank of Jubilee, Farmers’ Insurance, and a newspaper office called the Daily Cutter.

She’d never lived in a small town—well, not that she could remember. With her hands clutched on the steering wheel, she contemplated the dimensions of where she found herself. This place pushed against every boundary of the lifestyle she’d always lived.

And not in a good way.

Anxiety secreted a knot in her stomach and she thought of the way oysters made pearls, building a protective layer inside against an invading grain of sand.

What in the hell was she doing here?

You had nowhere else to go.

That wasn’t entirely true. She could have moved to Argentina, started a new life in a new country, close to her mother and Ignacio. But that seemed even more foreign and faraway than Jubilee. Besides, she felt like a third thumb around her mother and her new husband.

What if no one here liked her? What if she didn’t like them? Maybe she should turn north and just keep on driving until she reached the safety of the Chicago city limits.

And then do what? She’d already spent three months pounding the pavement, looking for a job she knew she was not going to get. Destiny had friends in high places. She had nowhere to stay. She’d already worn out her welcome on her friend Abby’s couch after she’d been forced to give up her apartment because she couldn’t make rent. This was it. Her new life.

Ugh.

She shook her head and let her gaze drift over her surroundings once more. Up ahead lay a restaurant called the Mesquite Spit. She could smell steaks grilling even through the rolled-up window of her car. Pickup trucks and SUVs jammed the parking lot, but it didn’t look like the kind of place that put a high premium on quality lettuce, so she kept driving.

And then she saw the sign.

“Oak Hill Cemetery ½ Mile
.
”

Oak Hill was where they’d buried Dutch.

Impulsively, she turned, following where the sign pointed, and took the road running up the hill behind the Mesquite Spit.

A wispy bank of gray clouds played across a sky glazed with the purple-pearl sheen of impending twilight. The temperature was sluggish, neither hot nor cold, midrange and noncommittal. Sixty-five, Mariah guessed, until she parked the car beside a maintenance shed and got out. The wind tickled her hair. Sixty, she recalculated, and the dampish air carried the musky smell of composting leaves mingling with the sharp, smoky scent of burning mesquite.

The cemetery wasn’t big, but it was old. Oaks, pecans, and elm trees so large that two people joining hands couldn’t reach around them, sheltered the plots. The burial ground was laid out in a simple grid pattern on the flat of the hilltop.

Where to start her search?

Look for a freshly turned grave.

A prickling sensation tickled the back of her neck as her feet processed the rows.

She found it with surprising ease, the rich scent of loam leading her to the spot. No headstone yet. Too soon for that. But there was a cardboard placard attached to a stake and numerous flower arrangements.

R
ANDOLPH
“D
UTCH
” C
ALLAHAN

T
HE GREATEST CUTTER WHO EVER LIVED
.

As she stood there, in the waning sunlight, looking at her estranged father’s grave, Mariah’s emotions formed a mosaic snapshot. Crystal clear. A fractured monochrome of bands and circles, dots and triangles. Black. White. Gray. The primary sensation was one of deep, unabated loss.

“Dutch,” she whispered. “I hardly knew you. Why does it hurt so damn much?” It wasn’t so much the pain of losing him, but of never having him. An unrequited love, if you will. Loving someone who couldn’t love you back.

One of the few memories she had of her father was when he’d taken her riding. She’d been quite small, three or four at most, and the main thing she recalled about the day was sitting in the saddle with him. Her back pressed against his strong chest, his ropy arms around her, his tanned hands competently holding the leather reins, guiding the horse. In that moment, she remembered feeling utterly safe and protected. As if nothing bad could ever happen as long as her daddy had her back. She’d lost that feeling when Dutch left, and she’d never experienced it again.

She turned to go back to her car, but as she did, a brown pickup climbed the hill to the cemetery. It looked like Joe’s truck.

Mariah didn’t know why she did what she did next. She just reacted without thinking, slipping behind the maintenance building, holding her breath, spying on Joe as he pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the cemetery from where she hid.

He stepped from the truck, tall and lanky and easy-gaited. In his hand, he carried a wicker basket of yellow chrysanthemums. She assumed he was coming to pay his respects to Dutch, but instead of turning down the row where her father’s grave was located, he walked closer to the maintenance shed.

Had he seen her?

Her heart galloped. Why was she hiding from him? Why did she find the thought that he was coming after her so compelling? Twisted. She’d always known she wasn’t quite right.

But no. He wasn’t coming for her. He walked on past the maintenance shed.

Twin ghosts, relief and disappointment, hovered around her. Mariah edged to the other side of the building and peeked around the corner so she could follow where he went.

He stopped at a grave, knelt down, and placed the basket of flowers near the headstone. He stood up, took off his Stetson, and bowed his head.

Joe was praying.

A lump formed in her throat. Feeling like the worst kind of voyeur, Mariah stepped back, glanced away, and gave the man his privacy. She stood with her spine pressed against the side door of the locked building, arms splayed against the wood.

The sun dipped to the horizon. The air thickened. In the distance, she heard a dog bark.

A minute passed.

Then five.

Whose grave was it? How long was he going to stay there?

Her stomach rumbled. She couldn’t really come out now. He would know she’d hidden from him and she’d look stupid. Why had she hidden from him?

She heard a car door slam. Was it he? Had he gone?

The crunch of footsteps on fallen leaves echoed across the cemetery. Close.

Very close.

She shut her eyes. Prayed that Joe did not look behind the shed. Scrambled to come up with an excuse in case he did.

“Hey, lady.”

Mariah jumped and her eyes flew open.

A middle-aged man dressed in blue jeans coveralls and rubber knee boots stood at the far corner of the building. He had a face like a glacier, flat, cold, and big. His salt and pepper hair thinned around his temples. He possessed eyes the size and color of watermelon seeds and an elongated, plankish mouth. “Hey, lady.”

“Y-yes?” she stammered, caught completely off guard by this odd-looking stranger when she’d been expecting to see Joe.

“You’re in my way.” He nodded at the door. “You shouldn’t be over here.”

“What? Oh, sorry,” she mumbled, and scurried off.

But instead of getting into her car, she found herself drawn to the gravesite with the basket of yellow chrysanthemums. She crept up on it, pushed her glasses up farther on her nose for a closer look.

An upright granite headstone. That had cost someone a nice chunk of change. The wind quickened, whistling through the leaves of the red oak tree standing sentinel over the grave. The tombstone read:

R
EBECCA
A
NNE
B
RACKEEN
D
ANIELS

A carving of two entwined hearts followed the information, and underneath the engraved twin hearts was the epitaph:

A
DORED WIFE OF
J
OSEPH

T
WO HEARTS WHO BELONG TOGETHER FOREVER

Palm to her mouth, Mariah stepped back, her shoes sinking into the damp earth of the grave behind Rebecca’s. Unnerved that she’d trod on someone’s grave, she turned and fled to the safety of her car. She sat in the front seat, keys clutched in her hand, trying to make sense of what she’d just learned. Four things were clear.

One: Joe was a widower.

Two: His wife had been only twenty-six years old when she’d died. Younger than Mariah was now.

Three: Dutch, Joe’s best friend, had died two years to the day after Rebecca’s death.

Four: Joe had loved his wife very, very much.

Goose bumps rose on her skin. Sympathy pawed at her. Her heart softened. No wonder Joe had gotten drunk last night and fallen into the horse trough and slept it off in a stupor. He’d been in a great deal of emotional pain.

And she’d been so mean to him. Calling him a derelict. Acting rude.

That’s what you get for making assumptions, for judging people.

Poor guy. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he was going through. She owed him a big apology because Joe Daniels was a man still grieving the love of his life.

Chapter Five

Playing it safe means you’re not even in the game.

—Dutch Callahan

J
oe tromped to the Silver Horseshoe looking for something to take his mind off his sorrow. His head still ached from his go-round with Jose Cuervo, so he wasn’t into that. He needed companionship more than anything else, a friendly face to keep him from dwelling on Becca and Dutch. He paused outside to scrape his boots on the welcome mat.

“Howdy, handsome,” Clover greeted him from behind the bar the minute he opened the door. Her kindly face folded into a heartfelt smile. “What’ll you have?”